Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
A Supreme Court ruling last week that found the Alabama Legislature created congressional districts illegally limiting the power of Black voters could lead to more Black candidates being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in other states as well.
However, the welcome decision — which former President Barack Obama called “an important victory for Black Alabamians and voters of color across the country” — isn’t stopping Republicans from continuing their efforts to suppress Black votes around the nation.
The 5-4 Supreme Court ruling could pave the way for courts to require congressional, state legislative or local government redistricting more favorable to Black people in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Texas and Washington state, where governmental bodies acted in similar ways as the Alabama Legislature to limit Black representation.
Such redistricting changes at the congressional level could play a key role in helping Democrats recapture majority control of the House in the 2024 elections.
In a democracy, political parties are supposed to try to win elections by proposing policies popular with voters. But Republicans are increasingly trying to win elections by keeping as many Democratic-leaning voters as possible from casting ballots.
Black people vote for Democrats more than any other group does, which is why suppressing the Black vote is now a top GOP priority. For example, in the 2020 presidential election, exit polls show that Democratic candidate Joe Biden won an overwhelming 90% of the Black vote, helping him defeat Republican President Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court decision dealing with Alabama upheld a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that bars practices giving racial minorities less opportunity than other voters to elect representatives of their choice.
A majority of justices found that such illegal practices were in force in Alabama because of the way congressional district lines were drawn. While 27% of Alabama’s population is Black, the state’s U.S. House delegation is made up of six white Republicans and only one Black Democrat.
The Supreme Court decision lets stand a ruling by an appeals court that requires the Alabama Legislature to create two congressional districts where Black people make up the majority or close to the majority of the population, giving voters a realistic chance of electing two Black members of Congress. A large number of Black Alabamians are currently packed into a single House district, where they make up a majority of voters.
When the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson — after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders waged a long campaign of marches, demonstrations and lobbying — many Black people in the South, including my own parents, won the right to vote for the first time.
Poll taxes, literacy tests and crazy tests (such as requiring Black people to accurately state how many jelly beans were in a jar) prevented many Blacks from voting.
And if that weren’t bad enough, Black folks faced threats of violence and actual violent assaults by white supremacists for daring to act “uppity” by claiming the same voting rights as whites.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court substantially weakened the Voting Rights Act with a 2013 decision that ended a requirement for states with a history of racially discriminatory voting practices to get the approval of the Justice Department or a three-judge panel before changing election laws and practices.
Ending the preclearance requirement enabled many Republican-controlled states to join the stampede of red states suppressing votes of Democrats in the name of “election integrity.”
Republicans have passed at least 104 voter suppression measures in 33 states to supposedly advance “election integrity” in response to the false and evidence-free claim by Trump that he was reelected in a landslide in 2020. Trump’s contention that he was cheated out of victory by a vast conspiracy of Democratic and Republican officials who rigged the election in favor of Biden has been rejected by more than 60 court decisions and by election officials from both political parties.
Voter suppression measures include making voter registration more difficult, limiting early voting and mail-in voting, making it easier to kick people off the voter rolls, requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, preventing people convicted of crimes from voting after serving their sentences, barring the popular “souls to the polls” Sunday early voting drives at Black churches and eliminating polling places and reducing the number of voting machines in Black neighborhoods to create hourslong lines.
President Biden and congressional Democrats support two excellent pieces of legislation that would expand voting rights. The first is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, to reverse the 2013 Supreme Court decision weakening the Voting Rights Act. The second is the Freedom to Vote Act, which includes a broad range of measures to end voter suppression. Republicans have blocked the passage of both bills.
Voting is the most important right we have as American citizens, protecting all our other rights by enabling us to choose our government leaders and thereby making elected officials dependent on our support to gain and keep power. Voting rights were long denied to Black people to keep us powerless and to give politicians no incentive to support our best interests.
Democrats will continue fighting to expand voting rights and stop voter suppression, no matter how long the struggle takes. And as citizens, we must all exercise our right to vote — in our own self-interest, to keep our democracy alive, and to honor the sacrifices Dr. King and others made on behalf of securing voting rights for all Americans.
Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, Senior Advisor at Purple Strategies, New York Times bestselling author, Chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and sought-after Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning media contributor to such outlets as ABC News, USA Today and TheGrio. She previously served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. Donna was the first Black American to serve as the manager of a major-party presidential campaign, running the campaign of Vice President Al Gore in 2000. She serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University and served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. She has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.
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